Ho avuto modo di vedere “I racconti di Terramare” (“Gedo Senki”) solo qualche giorno fa, nonostante fosse stato distribuito nelle sale italiane nell’aprile 2007. L’autore è Goro Miyazaki (il cui secondo atteso lavoro, “Kokurikozaka kara”, è invece uscito da poco in Giappone), il quale ha riadattato liberamente un romanzo della scrittice Ursula K. Le Guin. Di seguito, uno stralcio di un’intervista a Gualtiero Cannarsi (curatore per Lucky Red delle edizioni italiane dei film dello Studio Ghibli) apparsa sul sito Ghibli World.

Gedo Senki has already received cinema releases in various countries over the world and has been released on DVD on July 4. If people haven’t seen it yet, why should they go and buy a ticket to watch it at the cinema and/or buy the DVD? “Because it’s a great movie, with greatly inspired visuals and a very meaningful message within. […] that is one very important and extremely ‘actual’ message. It deals with the same old existentialist issue of “what’s the meaning of human life once you know you have to die anyway?”, but it frames it in a very contemporary asset, say a boy’s anxiety (of course that is very Kierkegaardish) in a ‘generational dis-communication’ which is very typical of our world. You see, for those who experienced actual war, life is usually an inestimable value, it is THE value you cannot even discuss about. That’s basically because life could not be taken for granted in their own lifetime, and they had to struggle to defend it. But, for nowadays youngsters, born and bred in an well developed and wealthy society, say a modern consumerist society, life is something you can easily question about, because you take it for granted and free since the day you are born. So what is the reason, the meaning, the real point of human life, in this contemporary world? Here is where existentialism kicks in, and where that kind of ‘inner pain of living’ (anxiety, desperation) can strike a boy to the point of an actual detach from his ‘light part’ (moral conscience), leading him to a life of self-hiding, sheltering from himself and committing apparently unreasonable acts, such as stabbing a respected father, assuming drugs, etc. You see we’re talking about Arren of course, but he’s just a symbol of today’s teenagers. All of this anxiety and anguish are also related to the ‘pain of growing up’, especially in the idea that ‘growing into an adult’ really means to find a proper place within a society. But with those issues in your mind, where is the actual value, what is the real point of growing-up? As Mr Miyazaki Goro says, “how to grow-up into a proper adult in this modern society?”. That is a point which I think is crucial for the whole modern industrialised world, and possibly especially true in Japan.

I do not know if you are familiar with the ‘otakuzoku’ sociological phenomenon, but that can also be seen as a ‘growing up impasse’ of the youth in the modern (post-war) society. Shinseiki Evangelion (as well as quite a lot of other Gainax’s works, if not all of them) also deals with the same issue, and it is really no wonder that Mr Anno Hideaki first got impressed by Mr Miyazaki Goro’s screenplay. Yet many other Japanese movies and directors nowadays are dealing with this same sociological key points, in a way or another. Starting from the generational dis-communication that follows those very sociological issues, you can easily think about the late Mr Fukasaku Kinji’s Battle Royale (again, quite Evangelion-inspired), or even Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, just to go back to Studio Ghibli walls.

All in all, I think the bottom line is that modern life is much harder to live in the ‘inner space’ of everyone’s mind, and the modern society seems to be suffering a lot because of an inadequate education of the youth in this respect. Gedo Senki deals exactly with this, so I think it is a very important movie, to be watched especially by boys and girls at the age of Arren and Therru. This movie is just like the light-shadow of conscience chasing the modern generations as the light-shadow of Arren’s conscience is chasing him in the movie itself.”

Lo stesso Cannarsi (Shito) è tornato recentemente sull’argomento nel forum del sito www.studioghibli.org: “io stupisco di fronte a un film come Ged Senki, un film fatto per esprimere qualcosa, per comunicare qualcosa che si sente di voler dire… e nulla più. E’ adorabile come tutto, tutto in quel film sia schiettamente focalizzato all’espressione comunicativa di UN SIGNIFICATO! Niente compiacimento scenico. Niente divertissement roboante. Niente fasto grafico. Macché: espressionismo funzionale! Tutto finalizzato a esprimere graficamente l’ansia/angoscia (fuan) di Arren, la sua disperazione (zetsubou) che lo porta prima ad accoltellare senza alcun motivo un padre pur da lui stimato, e poi a separasi e scappare dalla sua coscienza (la parte ‘di luce’) che diviene un’ombra che lo insegue e da cui lui fugge. E’ meraviglioso. La paura di vivere perché non si riesce a sostenere l’inquietante cognizione della finitezza del proprio essere, è così maschile. E tutto non può che risolversi nell’abbraccio di una femmina, perché femmina E’ vita, prima che pensiero della vita. Cos’altro aggiungere? E’ il film dell’umanità (sempre) e del dramma della società del benessere diffuso (adesso) che fa giovani che hanno tempo per pensare al non-senso della vita, ma non hanno cultura per sopportare il pensiero della vita. E’ fantastico”. [Re: “Kokuriko-zaka Kara”,nuovo film di Miyazaki Goro del 201   da Shito » dom lug 03, 2011 11:12 pm]

[un’approccio differente al tema della vita e del timore del suo divenire, che il padre Hayao ha trattato in diversi suoi lavori, tra cui Porco Rosso, di cui si parla in un’intervista segnalata da mm1 e ancora nel succitato forum: Re: Porco Rosso: commenti post-visione da Shito » ven nov 19, 2010 4:19 pm]